


Chickmas Pops

by Ebhenah



Series: Klancemas 2018 [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adoption, Atlas - Freeform, Christmas, Domestic klance, Found Family, Klance kid, M/M, Surrogacy, klance, klance kids, klancemas, monthlyklance, nicu mention, parent klance, parenting, sick kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 01:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16903332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ebhenah/pseuds/Ebhenah
Summary: When their twins are sick at Christmas, Lance and Keith are forced to make some adjustments. Keith reflects on how their family came together.Written for the Klancemas event by MonthlyKlance on tumblrKlancemas 2018"Chickmas Pops"Dec 8: Home(A future Klance-Family Fic)





	Chickmas Pops

The lights on the Christmas tree twinkled, casting oddly colored and ever-changing shadows into the two playpens that took up a good 90% of the remaining living room floor space- but the tree helped keep Talia and Rai entertained and distracted, so they all just had to deal with being crowded for the time being. Keith checked the thermometer and sighed. Almost 2 hours after treating the fever, the twins had temps of 102.3f and 101.8f. High, but less than the 103f that the pediatrician said warranted an after hours call. 

Chicken pox. 

Who even GOT chicken pox anymore? It had been virtually eradicated before Sendak showed up on Earth’s doorstep and proceeded to seriously fuck up all the infrastructure for non-urgent medical care like manufacturing vaccines for rarely fatal childhood illnesses. So, the supply had run out, and over the last few years there had been a half dozen or so minor outbreaks in some of the more densely populated areas of Earth. They hadn’t really put too much thought into it. Thace had always been a hardy, healthy kid that rarely got sick and then bounced back quickly. Honestly, they’d thought they wouldn’t even have to worry about it while they were living on the Atlas.

Then they’d adopted the twins.

It had been kind of a whirlwind. They’d been approved and had the home inspection and all the preliminaries but hadn’t yet been matched with a birth family and were still in the interview process when their worker had called in the middle of the night. There was a set of orphaned newborn twins needing immediate placement- were they interested? Lance had taken the call and relayed the message to him. No discussion had been needed, everything that needed to be said was contained in that split second of eye contact. Yes. Of course. 

The worker had warned that the twins were weak, sick. She had no idea what kind of prognosis they were looking at. They were still undergoing tests. Results were expected within the hour. There could be lifelong health concerns. He’d been able to hear her for himself by then, thanks to how closely he’d crowded his husband when he’d passed over a pen and paper to jot down the details. Lance quirked one eyebrow at him and he knew that if he’d said they couldn’t take that on, Lance would have ended the call. He also knew that Lance was well aware that hearing that these babies were going to be a ‘hard placement’ would cement his decision on the spot. 

~Ask her where and when we get to meet our kids. Ask if they have names~ he’d scrawled on the paper. Lance had nodded and he’d grabbed his own phone to call Coran to stay with three year old Thace, and before they knew it, they were guzzling shitty hospital coffee and going over paperwork with their worker in a blandly decorated ‘family room’ across from the NICU. They’d gone to bed that night fathers of one, and by dawn, they’d have three kids.

They hadn’t already had names, so he and Lance had quickly brainstormed and came up with two that they liked and meant something. Talia Rinn and Raimundo “Rai” Garrett Kogane- they’d gotten to watch the nurses write ‘Talia’ and ‘Rai’ on little cards that read ‘Hi, my name is:’ and slip them into little display windows on plastic isolettes. That had been the first time they’d seen them. Tiny. Thin. All arms and legs and ribs. IV tubes and oxygen cannulas and various sensors covering too much of their little bodies. They’d taken one peek at the frail looking babies who were kicking and screaming in outrage and fallen head over heels in love. Instantly, they were their children.

The twins spent nearly a month in NICU. The adoption had been finalized before they’d ever seen the outside of the hospital. Rai came home first, Talia a week later. They hadn’t been given many details about the birth family, just that they’d been orphaned, the babies had been smaller than they should be, were sick with some kind of strep infection (medical stuff wasn’t his strong suit) and that Talia had a genetic condition that could be managed with the right treatments, but not cured. They’d said there was no way of knowing at that point how it would present itself or how severely she’d be impacted over the years. They’d also said that the twins had underdeveloped immune systems.

That had meant sourcing human donor milk for them, and repeated hospital trips for check-ups, testing, and various treatments, plus having the pediatrician pretty much on-call for the first year or so. The twins had been thriving, so they’d started to relax about their health. They’d felt confident enough in their health that they’d started the process to have a fourth child.

Then, a kid in their preschool had picked up chicken pox somehow… and now… here he was, tending to two feverish, itchy three year olds and scared to death. Lance’s family had offered to take Thace for the school holiday break, to limit his exposure to the germs and to make things a little easier on Keith and Lance, because sick twins took a LOT of parenting energy and attention. So, he’d been gone for almost a week, but he was going to be back at home on the ship for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with his parents and siblings. His poor, suffering siblings.

Sick on Christmas. 

Keith’s heart broke for them. 

They were clearly miserable, and very vocal about how much they hated the mittens they had to wear to prevent them from scratching. It had taken him FOREVER to get them to sleep, even with the fever and medicine that had ‘drowsiness’ listed as a side effect. He should be sleeping, himself, but he was too worried about those fevers- checking their temps every 20 minutes out of fear that they’d climbed another degree.

He was still hovering when Lance got home, his sister Veronica in tow. “How are they doing?” he whispered, leaning over to kiss Keith’s cheek.

“Itchy, cranky, and generally feeling awful,” Keith answered, “and the fevers haven’t broken yet.”

“They’ll break,” Lance assured him, “the fevers will break, and the blisters will stop showing up, and they’ll be back to their usual antics in no time.”

“Have you eaten anything?” Veronica asked softly, rubbing at the small of her back. She was their surrogate this time around, just barely 2 months shy of her due date and still working full-time ‘wrangling hotshot show-off pilots’. She was also the only other McClain sibling to reside on the Atlas, so she was around a lot. Not that he was complaining, he actually really enjoyed Veronica’s company- even if it was STILL a head trip for him to think too much about the fact that she was carrying his child.

“Ummm… I finished whatever nuggets these guys didn’t eat… and I had some coffee a while ago. Does that count?”

“Not even close,” she sighed, “I can order up something from the officer’s mess if you want?”

“That would be great,” Lance said, taking the decision out of his hands. “Something that reheats well, in case they wake up again.”

“Thanks, Roni.” He smiled at his sister-in-law. The officer’s mess didn’t REALLY do deliveries, but few people were able to say no to Veronica McClain… and that number shrank significantly since she’d started showing. Almost no one was willing to risk the wrath of a pregnant Analyst McClain.

“That’s what family’s for,” she said with a dismissive wave, already on the phone.

“How was the Christmas shopping?” he asked Lance.

“Productive,” Lance grinned at him. “I found every last thing on the list.”

“Sooo? We’re done?” 

“Our shopping is absolutely complete,” he confirmed.

“That’s awesome, babe, you are the best.”

“That I am,” Lance answered, flashing him double finger guns. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen Lance do that and it took him by such surprise that he cracked up.

“It’s not home-cooking,” Veronica said as she returned, “but they’re sending up chili, cornbread, and salad for us, plus a pot of soup and some shortbread cookies for the little charmers- they’ve got half this ship wrapped around their little fingers. You know that, right?”

“Oh yeah, we are aware,” Lance answered. “There’s STILL half a bag of uneaten Halloween candy from taking them trick-or-treating through the residential sections.”

“They are pretty darn adorable,” Keith agreed, reaching out to brush sweat-slick hair out of Rai’s eyes.

“Papi?” Talia’s voice was weak, rough with sleep, “Papi! Up!” She pulled herself to standing reaching out her mitten-covered hands.

“Someone missed you,” Veronica chuckled.

“Heyyyy precious girl,” Lance cooed, lifting her out of the playpen. “How’s Papi’s little star doing, hmm?”

She scowled, “Imma princess, like’lura- not a star!”

“My mistake,” Lance answered easily, “how is Papi’s little princess doing?”

“Sick,” she pouted, curling into Lance’s chest and tucking her head up under his chin the way she did when she was an infant, “have Chickmas Pops.”

Keith had to literally bite his tongue to keep from chuckling at how adorable Talia’s mash up of Christmas and Chicken Pox was. Veronica didn’t even bother.

“Awwww, that’s the cutest! Lance couldn’t say ‘blankets’ for the longest time. He used to say ‘blam-kips’. It was adorable.”

If there had been any doubt about Talia being sick, her lack of response to being called ‘the cutest’ would have laid it to rest. Ordinarily, she’d have responded to that by turning up the charm and chattering happily.

“I know, princess,” Lance soothed, rubbing her back and kissing the top of her head, “I know you feel awful. You need to sleep, so you’ll get better.”

“NO!” she shrieked, somehow managing to scare herself- or maybe just hurt her head. Either way, her eyes went huge and she grabbed a fistful of Lance’s shirt, stuffed her thumb into her mouth and curled even tighter to him, little whimpering noises escaping around her thumb.

She also managed to wake her brother. Rai started up that air-raid siren noise that signalled a full-on meltdown. Keith swept him up out of the playpen and into his arms as fast as he could manage trying to derail that whole nightmare before it got started. The sudden shift distracted him and he wrapped himself around his father like a koala bear, peeking over Keith’s shoulder at Veronica and waving. “Baby ticking?”

“Sorry bud,” she answered, “the baby isn’t kicking right now. I think baby is sleeping.” The last time Veronica had visited, she’d read him his bedtime story and he’d gotten to feel the baby kicking while he was curled up in her lap. He’d been pretty much obsessed with it ever since; telling basically everyone he encountered, ‘the baby ticked me! Babies tick to say hi!’.

By the time the food arrived, Veronica and Lance were both trapped on the couch by sleeping toddlers, Rai’s little had resting protectively on Veronica’s baby bump. Keith answered the door and accepted the cart from the rather burly Garrison staff.

“I heard the little ones are sick,” the guy- Keith thought his name might be Williams? Wilson? WilTON? Something like that, anyway- said, worry creasing his brow.

“Yeah. Chicken Pox,” Keith answered.

“That’s a shame. A real shame. Poor little things, sick at Christmas. We figured they must be sick. You usually come in on Tuesdays, all together with the Captain and the Ambassadors but you didn’t this week. Was weird not to hear them laughing and singing.” He stopped abruptly and cleared his throat, tugging his jacket back into place. “You just give us a call when you’re done with the cart and we’ll collect it. I hope the kiddos feel better soon. We added some jello and pudding to the cart- in case their throats are sore.”

“That was… very thoughtful.” Keith was touched, and more than a little surprised at the gesture. “Thank-you.”

“You’re welcome,” the guy- WilMER?- said, clearly feeling awkward and wanting to explain his knowledge of the family’s habits, “it’s just… it’s nice to see the families, you know? The kids, being just… kids? Makes this ship feel… different. Like… it’s not just a warship. It’s not just another posting. It’s the families, like yours… that’s what makes it better. The Atlas, it’s a HOME- especially at Christmas- you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Keith glanced back, he could barely see the tops of Veronica and Lance’s heads from this angle, but he could see the jumble of shoes that needed to be put away, and the couple of pen scribbles they hadn’t yet scrubbed off the wall at roughly knee height, and Thace’s backpack spilling out of the closet. He knew that Shiro’s quarters were at the end of the hall, and Allura’s were three doors down in the opposite direction and that the children had ‘secret knocks’ that gained them access to either quarters 24/7 that meant they’d often go ‘adventuring’ to the Princess’ or the Captain’s “realms” (he was pretty sure Coran had come up with that label). He could feel Black’s presence, strong and comforting, and to a lesser extent, Red’s, warm and fierce, in their docking bays a few levels below them- always on guard and at the ready.

It wasn’t just the rooms on this side of the door, where they lived. It was the entirety of the massive, transforming testament to the alliance between Earth and the lost Alteans. It was the people who lived and worked here, bonded over shared losses and victories; who had started a school and preschool, and opened up little casual shops of hand-made supplies, or little luxuries they had a source for on Earth, and planned potlucks and holiday parties, and watered each other’s plants when they were on mission or down on the surface. The whole ship was their HOME. 

“Yeah,” he repeated, “you’re right. The Atlas- it’s home.”


End file.
